Thread is full of spoilers
So I just saw this movie yesterday on a date. And like most of you I was underhwelmed, but unlike most underwheleming movies, I didnt stop thinking about it an hour after leaving the theatre, in fact I keep thinking about, so this movie is special in its own way.
Im someone who loves stylised thrillers, and the semi-dystopian noir style definately kept my interest, but just barely. This movie fails on many fronts but it is not an uninteresting film, it is the best example ive seen of wasted potential.
The characters were all potentially interesting, and you could tell the cast were doing their absolute best with a hollow script and janky story telling. And the performances saved this from being an absolute shitshow. So lets have a look at them.
*Sterling K Brown
He has some real leading role capablities and I'm interested to see how he handles the predator movie, but they just didnt develop his character enough. They did a little, and the scenes with Jodie foster and their cool Auntie/Nephew dynamic was fantastic. But apart from a fuck up brother who he seems to forget about for large chunks of the film and an assasin ex who have a completely mysterious and undeveloped relationship. I know nothing about this guy or his motovations. He just seems like a mildly heroic bank robber which is odd because the film lingers on him like we *should* know him better but we dont.
*Jodie Foster
Her acting is amazing, the quiet shaky rage when she finds out the truth about her son, the gripping anxiety when she steps outside is all very compelling stuff, shes the only character they developed somewhat siccesfully and it shows. The only character who you are genuinely thinking about through the whole film. But there could have been so much more, instead of just saying that Charlie Days character is an 'asshole' have them talk and verbally spar a bit more. And obviously there is this great assistant relationship in Batista but its not explored. Also, JFs delivery is perfect but some parts of the script are just not funny. And it hurts to watch.
*Batista
Probably the 2nd best character, any shortcomings can be blamed on the greater narrative of the film as apposed to the character or the acting. He doesn't get enough screen time and he shows a great range of soft protector and violent enforcer.
*Charlie Day
Wasted Wasted potential, although I found his accent cringy, he has real chops as a menacing villian. His tension filled scene with Sterling K Brown was brilliant, he elevated out of a 'joke' character and into someone powerfully intimidating. But he was reduced to a situational obstacle who spent most of the film waiting for a ride. He was also the biggest victim of a crappy script, the panicky-sorta-italian-sorta-mob guy llines dropped the quality of the film substantially.
*Sofia Boutella
Yeah this character was trash, Sofia brings *some* charisma to the role. But this a essentially an almost invincible 'exotic femme fatale' walking trope. The whole time watching it I couldnt help feeling like she had been taken out of a film like 'Smokin Aces' and given a role too big in Artemis. She has very little on screen chemistry with anyone including Sterling K Brown which hurt the film and wasted screen time. And im not going to give her points for being in the best fight scene in the film because it was basically the *only fight scene* in the film.
*Jenny Slate
I like Jenny Slate, but her as a slightly snarky cop in a future hellhole just doesnt work. She is the living embodyment of a pointless character she was brought in to partially develop another's backstory and she is never seen again.
*Jeff Goldblum
Somehow both wasted and unnesecary. He's an amazing actor and brings introgue to the role but he must have all of about 11 lines and most of them are just tepid quips. They could have done SO much more with him, but bringing him this late in the movie there is a feeling he might have been better as a 'never seen' voiced character like David Carridine in Kill Bill 1.
*Zachary Quinto
Just a bad casting choice, obviously he can play a villian, but a bland angry 'son of the don' with bad lines is just insulting tk the actor. He might be the worst character in the film, I knew nothing about him and felt nothing when he met his end.
Any other characters like Sterling's brother were just annoying and too poorky acted to go into detail about.
The setting of the film is interesting, and it spends sooo long on world building on character devopment and world building but it doesnt actually build the world or develop the characters. Any lengthy amount of time with the characters is repetetive exposition about the hotel itself (it has rules). Or just hit and miss (mostly miss) quippy one liners. There is almost no action in this movie so you basically have to treat it like a slow burner thats going to have a 'big payoff' at the end but it sorta just doesn't. Outside of very dedicated performances by the cast, the film gives you very little reason to care about some of the characters and zero reason to care about the others. I almost want to say I want to see a sequel which will just fix everything and waste no time doing more interesting things with this world but I dont think this film deserves a sequel, it just wasnt very good.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to ask me more about anything specific about the film if you want my perspective.
Next film I'll be reviewing is Bright.
So Bright isn't a good movie. But just like Hotel Artemis, its bad in some very interesting ways. UNLIKE Hotel Artemis, despite what even some of it's critics might say it's not a case of wasted potential, because it had very little potential to begin with.
The whole premise is a watercooler idea for a movie 'Training Day Meets Lord Of The Rings'. Despite it sounding like a wacky and fun thing you might come up with on a very under the influence 'deep' convo with the bros, it's a shit idea that was never going to work, and hamfisting overt racial commentary didn't do the film any fucking favors either. Let's start with the acting.
The Acting was passable for most of the characters, nothing too horrific apart from some of the hammy 'bigoted bad guy cop rants' that just felt forced. Smith and Edgerton for the most part achieved what they were going for, but then the roles weren't very demanding. The elf girl was fucking awful, and so were the FBI guys. Everyone else just kind of punched their work ticket and got it done.
The Characters is where the movie failed the hardest. You have a 'buddy cop' thing and neither of the characters are particularly likeable. This film fell victim to the 'Will Smith character' syndrome. We all have seen enough Will Smith films to see the 3 or 4 versions of his typecast personality role. And be clear, it's not that he can't act, he can actually act very well, he just doesn't play diverse roles, largely because he doens't need to. He can be one thing so well that it will still make a movie entertaining without sacrificing a good performance. But we always know what to expect, so sometimes character development comes across a little pointless.
This film seems to have fallen for that phenomena, its like David Ayer thought, "Hey, everyone knows and likes Will Smith, so his character will be likeable by default, no matter what he does in the film". So you have this barely developed, pissed-off, rude, violent, condescending ass of a cop, who's only redeeming feature is that the person playing him is named Will Smith. It's the laziest shortcut I've ever seen and it might be what pisses me off most considering the entire film falls apart when your main character isn't likeable.
Joel Edgerton did a very good job with what he was given, but what he was given was shit. He was supposed to be the sweet-hearted oppressed minority in the police force that you felt sorry for. And sometimes, you did. But his whole, overly nice, bumbling eccentric thing took away from him being a serious police partner. He was just like this big soft punching bag for Will Smith to be a dick to, it wasn't fun to watch and it didn't add to their mediocre chemistry. Also a lot of time fleshing him out was wasted on exposition for the fantasy and the world which brings us on to probably the criticism everyone wanted to hear...
The Worldbuilding and Setting couldn't have been done worse. The film was not anywhere near long enough to appropriately build a fantasy world on its own (look how long the LOTR films are), let alone a fantasy world ON TOP of an urban crime setting. Things are introduced and never explained, the 'origin story of the great war' is rushed in, and the supernatural elements feel cheap and under-utilised but then over utilised to patch up lazy story telling and crappy internal logic.
The obvious and most offensive is the 'racial aspect' of the fantasy races which was never going to work, because racial allegories, need to be subtle and well developed to create a believable metaphor to real life. Bright has Orcs in chains and gold teeth throwing up gang-signs and all but loudly tells you they are 'black or hispanics in the ghetto'. But it's stupid because there already are blacks and hispanics in the ghetto, and it's where the movie is set, it already has the racial observation of real life, so why do you need orcs as a metaphor? It's so LAZY they wanted to make a hard hitting point about race without even deciding what the point was going to be.
And then the Elves live in the elite and hipster part of L.A. all very afluent and cut off from the rest of the city. I couldn't decide if they were supposed to just represent 'rich people' or 'rich white people' or more worryingly 'jews', and I don't think the movie could decide either. It wanted to shoe-horn a well known fanatsy race to make a point about 'privileged groups' without doing any of the hard work. I could go on and on all day but the film only made a quasi effort with the setting because of..
The Plot isnt as awful as the world building but it's so fucking GENERIC it actually hurts the film more. You have a world with all these wacky elements and the film worries if you don't have the most cliche'd trope riddled, 'Chosen one' 'Buddy Cop' 'Magic Artifact' one dimensional adventure film then the audience might get confused. Well you can't save the film from being confusing so you can at least try and make the story interesting but they didn't there is nothing interesting to say about how the story is told, it just hits all the predictable beats and ends. Which wouldn't be a huge problem if the two leads were likable but they weren't.
This film was also wrapped in controversy for being hated by critics but loved by 'audiences'. I think people need to understand that you can like a bad film and no one can tell you otherwise, but bad is still bad and calling it 'fun' and 'enjoyable' is not a defense. Do you know what's a genuinely enjoyable film?
You Got Served
Go on watch it again, you'll love the time you have with it, but you'll never call it a good film, and you shouldn't.
What film should I do next?
HOTEL ARTEMIS
So I just saw this movie yesterday on a date. And like most of you I was underhwelmed, but unlike most underwheleming movies, I didnt stop thinking about it an hour after leaving the theatre, in fact I keep thinking about, so this movie is special in its own way.
Im someone who loves stylised thrillers, and the semi-dystopian noir style definately kept my interest, but just barely. This movie fails on many fronts but it is not an uninteresting film, it is the best example ive seen of wasted potential.
The characters were all potentially interesting, and you could tell the cast were doing their absolute best with a hollow script and janky story telling. And the performances saved this from being an absolute shitshow. So lets have a look at them.
*Sterling K Brown
He has some real leading role capablities and I'm interested to see how he handles the predator movie, but they just didnt develop his character enough. They did a little, and the scenes with Jodie foster and their cool Auntie/Nephew dynamic was fantastic. But apart from a fuck up brother who he seems to forget about for large chunks of the film and an assasin ex who have a completely mysterious and undeveloped relationship. I know nothing about this guy or his motovations. He just seems like a mildly heroic bank robber which is odd because the film lingers on him like we *should* know him better but we dont.
*Jodie Foster
Her acting is amazing, the quiet shaky rage when she finds out the truth about her son, the gripping anxiety when she steps outside is all very compelling stuff, shes the only character they developed somewhat siccesfully and it shows. The only character who you are genuinely thinking about through the whole film. But there could have been so much more, instead of just saying that Charlie Days character is an 'asshole' have them talk and verbally spar a bit more. And obviously there is this great assistant relationship in Batista but its not explored. Also, JFs delivery is perfect but some parts of the script are just not funny. And it hurts to watch.
*Batista
Probably the 2nd best character, any shortcomings can be blamed on the greater narrative of the film as apposed to the character or the acting. He doesn't get enough screen time and he shows a great range of soft protector and violent enforcer.
*Charlie Day
Wasted Wasted potential, although I found his accent cringy, he has real chops as a menacing villian. His tension filled scene with Sterling K Brown was brilliant, he elevated out of a 'joke' character and into someone powerfully intimidating. But he was reduced to a situational obstacle who spent most of the film waiting for a ride. He was also the biggest victim of a crappy script, the panicky-sorta-italian-sorta-mob guy llines dropped the quality of the film substantially.
*Sofia Boutella
Yeah this character was trash, Sofia brings *some* charisma to the role. But this a essentially an almost invincible 'exotic femme fatale' walking trope. The whole time watching it I couldnt help feeling like she had been taken out of a film like 'Smokin Aces' and given a role too big in Artemis. She has very little on screen chemistry with anyone including Sterling K Brown which hurt the film and wasted screen time. And im not going to give her points for being in the best fight scene in the film because it was basically the *only fight scene* in the film.
*Jenny Slate
I like Jenny Slate, but her as a slightly snarky cop in a future hellhole just doesnt work. She is the living embodyment of a pointless character she was brought in to partially develop another's backstory and she is never seen again.
*Jeff Goldblum
Somehow both wasted and unnesecary. He's an amazing actor and brings introgue to the role but he must have all of about 11 lines and most of them are just tepid quips. They could have done SO much more with him, but bringing him this late in the movie there is a feeling he might have been better as a 'never seen' voiced character like David Carridine in Kill Bill 1.
*Zachary Quinto
Just a bad casting choice, obviously he can play a villian, but a bland angry 'son of the don' with bad lines is just insulting tk the actor. He might be the worst character in the film, I knew nothing about him and felt nothing when he met his end.
Any other characters like Sterling's brother were just annoying and too poorky acted to go into detail about.
The setting of the film is interesting, and it spends sooo long on world building on character devopment and world building but it doesnt actually build the world or develop the characters. Any lengthy amount of time with the characters is repetetive exposition about the hotel itself (it has rules). Or just hit and miss (mostly miss) quippy one liners. There is almost no action in this movie so you basically have to treat it like a slow burner thats going to have a 'big payoff' at the end but it sorta just doesn't. Outside of very dedicated performances by the cast, the film gives you very little reason to care about some of the characters and zero reason to care about the others. I almost want to say I want to see a sequel which will just fix everything and waste no time doing more interesting things with this world but I dont think this film deserves a sequel, it just wasnt very good.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to ask me more about anything specific about the film if you want my perspective.
Next film I'll be reviewing is Bright.
BRIGHT
So Bright isn't a good movie. But just like Hotel Artemis, its bad in some very interesting ways. UNLIKE Hotel Artemis, despite what even some of it's critics might say it's not a case of wasted potential, because it had very little potential to begin with.
The whole premise is a watercooler idea for a movie 'Training Day Meets Lord Of The Rings'. Despite it sounding like a wacky and fun thing you might come up with on a very under the influence 'deep' convo with the bros, it's a shit idea that was never going to work, and hamfisting overt racial commentary didn't do the film any fucking favors either. Let's start with the acting.
The Acting was passable for most of the characters, nothing too horrific apart from some of the hammy 'bigoted bad guy cop rants' that just felt forced. Smith and Edgerton for the most part achieved what they were going for, but then the roles weren't very demanding. The elf girl was fucking awful, and so were the FBI guys. Everyone else just kind of punched their work ticket and got it done.
The Characters is where the movie failed the hardest. You have a 'buddy cop' thing and neither of the characters are particularly likeable. This film fell victim to the 'Will Smith character' syndrome. We all have seen enough Will Smith films to see the 3 or 4 versions of his typecast personality role. And be clear, it's not that he can't act, he can actually act very well, he just doesn't play diverse roles, largely because he doens't need to. He can be one thing so well that it will still make a movie entertaining without sacrificing a good performance. But we always know what to expect, so sometimes character development comes across a little pointless.
This film seems to have fallen for that phenomena, its like David Ayer thought, "Hey, everyone knows and likes Will Smith, so his character will be likeable by default, no matter what he does in the film". So you have this barely developed, pissed-off, rude, violent, condescending ass of a cop, who's only redeeming feature is that the person playing him is named Will Smith. It's the laziest shortcut I've ever seen and it might be what pisses me off most considering the entire film falls apart when your main character isn't likeable.
Joel Edgerton did a very good job with what he was given, but what he was given was shit. He was supposed to be the sweet-hearted oppressed minority in the police force that you felt sorry for. And sometimes, you did. But his whole, overly nice, bumbling eccentric thing took away from him being a serious police partner. He was just like this big soft punching bag for Will Smith to be a dick to, it wasn't fun to watch and it didn't add to their mediocre chemistry. Also a lot of time fleshing him out was wasted on exposition for the fantasy and the world which brings us on to probably the criticism everyone wanted to hear...
The Worldbuilding and Setting couldn't have been done worse. The film was not anywhere near long enough to appropriately build a fantasy world on its own (look how long the LOTR films are), let alone a fantasy world ON TOP of an urban crime setting. Things are introduced and never explained, the 'origin story of the great war' is rushed in, and the supernatural elements feel cheap and under-utilised but then over utilised to patch up lazy story telling and crappy internal logic.
The obvious and most offensive is the 'racial aspect' of the fantasy races which was never going to work, because racial allegories, need to be subtle and well developed to create a believable metaphor to real life. Bright has Orcs in chains and gold teeth throwing up gang-signs and all but loudly tells you they are 'black or hispanics in the ghetto'. But it's stupid because there already are blacks and hispanics in the ghetto, and it's where the movie is set, it already has the racial observation of real life, so why do you need orcs as a metaphor? It's so LAZY they wanted to make a hard hitting point about race without even deciding what the point was going to be.
And then the Elves live in the elite and hipster part of L.A. all very afluent and cut off from the rest of the city. I couldn't decide if they were supposed to just represent 'rich people' or 'rich white people' or more worryingly 'jews', and I don't think the movie could decide either. It wanted to shoe-horn a well known fanatsy race to make a point about 'privileged groups' without doing any of the hard work. I could go on and on all day but the film only made a quasi effort with the setting because of..
The Plot isnt as awful as the world building but it's so fucking GENERIC it actually hurts the film more. You have a world with all these wacky elements and the film worries if you don't have the most cliche'd trope riddled, 'Chosen one' 'Buddy Cop' 'Magic Artifact' one dimensional adventure film then the audience might get confused. Well you can't save the film from being confusing so you can at least try and make the story interesting but they didn't there is nothing interesting to say about how the story is told, it just hits all the predictable beats and ends. Which wouldn't be a huge problem if the two leads were likable but they weren't.
This film was also wrapped in controversy for being hated by critics but loved by 'audiences'. I think people need to understand that you can like a bad film and no one can tell you otherwise, but bad is still bad and calling it 'fun' and 'enjoyable' is not a defense. Do you know what's a genuinely enjoyable film?
You Got Served
Go on watch it again, you'll love the time you have with it, but you'll never call it a good film, and you shouldn't.
What film should I do next?
